Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony is a rapidly growing alternative to switched circuit telephony. Typically, a user purchases a VoIP software package and installs it on his personal computer (PC). To initiate a voice exchange with another party, the user enters an IP address of the other party and, if the other party has a similar software package, an exchange of voice information occurs.
Audio information is sampled by the VoIP package once every 10–30 ms. The samples are encoded into an IP packet containing an IP address of the other party. The packet is transferred over a connection to the Internet, and, ultimately, to a PC of the other party.
Within the PC of the other party, the sample is recovered and converted back into an analog signal. The analog signal is applied to a set of earphones or speaker and the other party hears the voice of the user. Voice information of the other party is transferred back to the original user under a similar process.
While VoIP telephony works relatively well, its functionality has been limited to point-to-point applications. Accordingly, a need exists for more flexible methods of using VoIP telephony.